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Jaqui's Daily Blog

The American Diner Replaced and being a Jail Bird

We are just parking up on the road outside the Sea Lane Cafe. I point out the house with the two wooden chairs set invitingly outside, facing the sea. It's where our friends, Delia and Jim live, I tell the girls, and we
go there to play cribbage once a fortnight on a Tuesday afternoon.

The girls look at me with what looks like renewed respect. Then they realise that I said "cribbage" not "Quidditch". The very thought of Mr
B and I flying around on our broomsticks every Tuesday afternoon fills me with awe and delight. Perhaps I should suggest it as a new U3A group at the forthcoming Enrolment Day? That would shake them all up. Quite literally.

The Swift Girls, Katie and Eleanor, are here to stay for a few days. We have a lot to pack in if we are to revisit old haunts and discover some new ones. The trip to the Sea Lane Cafe arises from the demise of the American Diner which the girls always
loved, despite the fact that it involved the longest trek to the loo in the history of seafront restaurants. Now, as reported in my my last blog, the American Diner is being transformed into a Harry Ramsden's fish restaurant. I suspect my girls are the only
people who regret the transformation. The Sea Lane Cafe, we all decide, will be our new American Diner. We sit in one of the booths, looking out over the sea and watching the wind surfers wheel and twist in the air and occasionally come a cropper.

We have already tried out the putting green (Grandad, aka Mr B wins) and paid a trip to "Woodhenge", the Waterwise Garden on the beach. The girls allow me to take a photograph
of them peeping through one of the wooden carvings, to compare with the one I took years and years ago. Dozens of children are playing in the adjacent playground though the girls are far too old for such delights these days.

Back home, our stomachs pleasantly full (as you know, I am always thinking about my stomach, bless it) we broke open the Kent edition of Monopoly. Mr B is a Man of Kent, born and bred, while the girls are the fairest of Kentish Maidens. All the place
names are familiar to them. I manage to take possession of the best properties on the board - Canterbury Cathedral and Leeds Castle - while Mr B nabs the stations and utilities. Eleanor ends up owning a selection of castles, none of which seem to pay out much
in ground rent. Katie is the Banker, doling out the money with aplomb when anyone passes go or raking in £100 notes from everyone landing on Abbey National which bore the motto "Because life's complicated enough." It always made us laugh.

I adopt a new strategy, borne of the fact that I somehow manage to end up in jail not once, but four times. By staying put and missing the required three turns, I manage to rake in lots of money from people landing on
my property while not risking landing on anyone else's. I am a proper jail bird. Everyone else cottons onto the idea and the jail becomes quite crowded at times. Who ever said that crime doesn't pay?

We end
the day with The Lego Movie. It is the third time I have watched it, but the first time I have managed to watch it from beginning to end. Everything is awesome! (if you haven't watched the film, you won't understand the reference. Everything is Awesome is
one of those film scores which stays annoyingly in your head for days afterwards so that you suddenly find yourself carolling "Everything is awesome!" in the queue at the Tesco checkout, to everyone's surprise and discomfiture.) Try it and see for yourself.

Post script from Eleanor: One of the first things that we decided to do when we arrived in Worthing was to do some putting as Nanna mentioned earlier. Took a bit of getting used to, with my first hit going straight off
the course and nearly hitting nearby walkers! Not a good start... In the end as I'm sure we all expected, I came last with 53 points after eighteen holes. Once we had eaten dinner at our new america diner, we thought that it would be a little too early to
start watching the Lego movie so we stuck with monopoly where once again, I came last. I must say, I think Nanna has broken the world record for the number of times to have been in jail. We did actually wonder what would happen if all four of us ended up in
jail! Luckily it didn't, with it finishing as grandad having over £2000 when everyone counted their money up ( as I had gone bankrupt already). The afternoon was filled with laughter however one of the funniest parts has to be when Katie and I thought
that Nanni said that she played "Quidditch" with some of their friends! Our first full day should hopefully be the Littlehampton one due to the sunny forecast - lets hope the forecast stays that way!